living, including their access to education
and medical care, generally improved
under Castro. But wealthy and middle-
class Cubans fled by the thousands, most
of them to the United States. Some were
Batistianos, rich allies of Batista who
brought their fortunes with them and
were known as “golden exiles.” Others
were planters, ranchers, businessmen,
doctors, lawyers, bankers, civil servants,
and teachers. From 1959 to 1962 alone,
about 155,000 Cubans fled to the United
States; the total reached more than
500,000 by 1973.
The Cuban exiles, as they became
known, tended to be highly educated and
skilled, and so had greater advantages in
finding work than did most other
Hispanic immigrants to the United
States. They were aided by a govern-
ment that welcomed them as allies against
Castro and communism and gave them
permanent residency status, free tempo-
rary housing, medical care, financial aid,
and job counseling. Their race also aided
them: Cuba’s upper classes were largely of
pure Spanish descent, and were therefore
light skinned and not subject to as much
racial prejudice as darker-skinned immi-
grants. Yet with all their advantages, most
Cuban exiles had to work hard, for Castro
routinely confiscated their life savings
and property as a condition of allowing
them to leave. Emigration to the United
States was banned from 1962 to 1965,
and again beginning in 1973, though
some Cubans still managed to reach the
United States via travel to a third country
or clandestine escape by boat.
Most Cuban exiles settled in Miami,
where they joined a preexisting Cuban
population that had once included Castro
himself; he had raised money there in
1955 for his struggle against Batista.
Many exiles hoped to return to Cuba
after Castro’s fall. A considerable number
hoped to orchestrate that fall themselves,
with U.S. help.
A sleepy retirement town before the
Cuban exiles arrived, Miami grew into an
international center of finance and trade
with the help of the new arrivals. By 2000
its population was more than 60 percent
Hispanic. But Cubans spread out to other
parts of the country as well, aided by U.S.
government efforts to resettle them to
relieve the population pressure on Miami.
Cities with large Cuban-American com-
munities as of 2000 included Union City,180 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY
Support for President John F. Kennedy is shown in a Miami storefront.(Library of
Congress)Miami’s Cuban Population, 1980